Integrative and holistic pain management options

holistic pain managementPain management can be a challenge whether you are using holistic pain management or conventional pain management. The term itself implies that the pain cannot be fixed and needs to be "manged". Yet our Phoenix pain management treatments take a different approach and can be effective at resolving your underlying pain. 

It is estimated that more than 50 million Americans live with chronic pain on a daily basis! That's a lot and most are either resigned to the fact that their pain will never go away, or that they will be on prescription pain killers for the rest of their lives. This is not true. If you or someone you care about is in pain, you need to know - holistic pain management and pain relief therapy is possible.

We understand that when you're in pain, everything suffers - your work, your hobbies, your relationships, your self-esteem, and your hope that things will ever get better. With that in mind, the goal is not to remove any medication that is working but enhance their effectiveness using holistic pain treatments. One way to do this is to not only control and manage your pain, but treat the underlying condition. In doing so you get lasting pain relief. Like any treatment the process starts by getting a thorough understanding of you, the treatments that are working, those you have tried, and those that have not worked.  

We all know that the pain we feel is there to tell us something is wrong in our body. Sometime there is a physical issue and other times it is a faulty nervous system (neuropathic pain). Masking the pain with medications may numb you to its presence, but pain is the symptom of a problem that will persist in your body until a trained health professional takes the time to find its source. Finding the source and usiing unique pain management solutions is precisely what we do here at Southwest Integrative Medicine. 

Extensively trained in integrative medicine, we find that using both conventional and holistic pain management together works best. Though natural pain management is what we strive for, prescription medication can be used in lower doses and be more effective when prescribed in conjunction with natural therapies and medications. Still its is not uncommon for many of our chronic pain patients to stop or reduce their pain medications and have little or no pain.

 

Our phoenix pain treatments starts by knowing the source of your pain. The cause of your pain may stem from more than once source in your body, but there is often an underlying theme that connects the sources. Some of these may include:

  • Tissue damage. When cells are damaged - from car accident injuries or autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus - these damaged cells release chemical messengers to alert the immune system that something is wrong. In response, the immune system creates inflammation that causes the pain. Getting rid of the pain means finding pain relief therapy that can heal the damaged cells, prevent further damage, nd maintain healthy immune function.

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  • Inflammation. Any number of conditions and health problems can cause inflammation. It's the chronic inflammation that leads to chronic pain. Things like arthritis pain, fibromyalgia pain, chronic sinusitis pain, pain from muscle spasms, and joint dysfunction pain are examples of chronic inflammation. The automatic response among most conventional doctors is to treat the symptom(s) with medications that cover up the problem. But not only do these pain killers have unwelcome side effects, they also prevent you from discovering and treating the true source of your illness, which is the only permanent path to pain relief. 

  • Structural imbalances. When your joints are unaligned because of structural imbalances - such as postural problems, injures or over-worked muscles - it creates friction and pulling. This can lead to tissue damage, which is the cause of the inflammation that triggers muscle spasms and, of course, pain. So stopping the pain means assessing and correcting this structural imbalance.

  • Tight muscles. Whether stemming from old injuries or an inherent lack of flexibility, tight muscles can cause muscle spasms. These spasms press on nerves and pull structures out of alignment, which creates tissue damage, then inflammation, then pain. We can help release the tightness in your muscles with pain relief therapies so that your joints can be restored to normal alignment - for back pain phoenix, neck pain, migraines, headaches and more.

  • Qi Stagnation. Generally speaking, when there is pain in the body, there is some form of Qi stagnation. Qi is an energy in your body that moves through a network of channels. Qi stagnation occurs when one or more of these channels are blocked. Through acupuncture and cupping, we can release these blocks. Here is an analogy to think about, think of a river with a small eddy in it. If you place a stick in the middle of the eddy, the water will disperse and flow evenly. This is the goal with acupuncture - to disperse your Qi so this energy can flow evenly throughout your body. It is this process that pain management acupuncture works.

From back pain and shoulder pain to fibromyalgia, our pain management options can get you more relief with less potential harm.